Nice review highlighting the benefits of exercise over weight loss for obesity

[Heisman2]

This should hopefully balance out concern of anti-exercise sentiment from several recent threads regarding an increase in exercise leading to a less-than-expected increase in TDEE. Regardless of that and weight overall, there are great benefits to increasing fitness levels (at any BMI).

https://www.cell.com/iscience/fullte...042(21)00963-9

[EiFit91]

This should hopefully balance out concern of anti-exercise sentiment from several recent threads regarding an increase in exercise leading to a less-than-expected increase in TDEE. Regardless of that and weight overall, there are great benefits to increasing fitness levels (at any BMI).

https://www.cell.com/iscience/fullte...042(21)00963-9

I looked through it quickly so apologies for mistakes.

It seems to me that this is way worse as it seems to support the «healthy at every size» movement and severely downplays the role of weight loss. I found their reading of the BMI mortality literature and weight loss literature highly biased.

My personal opinion is that one should recommend obese/overweight to both lose weight and to exercise. Both because they have positive health effects. But weight loss most often needs to come from diet changes and not exercise (but one should exercise anyway!)

Edit: Here is an example of what I mean by «biased»:

«Failure to account for baseline health status may also confound the BMI-mortality relationship. However, even when restricting analyses to never smokers without pre-existing health conditions and deleting the first 5 years of follow-up, the general shape of the BMI-mortality relationship is similar, with increased risk observed at both the lower and higher ends of the BMI distribution (Flegal et al., 2017; Global BMI Mortality Collaboration et al., 2016; Yi et al., 2015). »

But they don’t mention that when you do address those confounds, you see the results much more clearly favor the healthy BMI range. The Global BMI collaboration that they cite here even makes a big point of this. Omitting this of course benefits their narrative, but it is a gross misrepresentation of those studies in the context of their discussion. I attach a figure from another meta-analysis (Aune et al., 2016 in BMJ) that nicely illustrates that the more confounds you address the more the results shift in favor of the «normal» BMI range.



Source: https://www.bmj.com/content/353/bmj.i2156

[Heisman2]

When I posted this I hoped someone would say something akin to "this swings the pendulum too far in the opposite direction". You do not disappoint!

The authors are biased to some degree without question. To their credit:

- they include a ton of the relevant literature
- they do acknowledge that healthy weight + fit is healthier than obesity + fit
- they emphasize that obesity + fit is healthier than healthy weight + unfit

So it completely depends on context and the message you want to convey. Their main point is that for interventions, focusing on fitness will likely yield more bang for the buck than focusing on weight loss since weight loss interventions typically do not yield a ton of weight loss.

One thing I really dislike though is their emphasis on weight cycling as a reason not to try to lose weight, or the whole "dieting makes you fat" mantra. We've discussed before the literature that suggests maintaining lean body mass is key to keep weight off in the long term and most interventions don't do this.

I do agree without question that exercise + weight loss is the way to go. But for individuals who have attempted and failed at weight loss and our discouraged, perhaps shifting the emphasis to exercise and increasing fitness while tabling weight loss efforts would give them a mental reboot, build up some self-esteem, yield significant health benefits, and allow better efforts at weight loss later on. I'm not aware of any trials that evaluate this approach.

[EiFit91]

When I posted this I hoped someone would say something akin to "this swings the pendulum too far in the opposite direction". You do not disappoint!

The authors are biased to some degree without question. To their credit:

- they include a ton of the relevant literature
- they do acknowledge that healthy weight + fit is healthier than obesity + fit
- they emphasize that obesity + fit is healthier than healthy weight + unfit

So it completely depends on context and the message you want to convey. Their main point is that for interventions, focusing on fitness will likely yield more bang for the buck than focusing on weight loss since weight loss interventions typically do not yield a ton of weight loss.

One thing I really dislike though is their emphasis on weight cycling as a reason not to try to lose weight, or the whole "dieting makes you fat" mantra. We've discussed before the literature that suggests maintaining lean body mass is key to keep weight off in the long term and most interventions don't do this.

I do agree without question that exercise + weight loss is the way to go. But for individuals who have attempted and failed at weight loss and our discouraged, perhaps shifting the emphasis to exercise and increasing fitness while tabling weight loss efforts would give them a mental reboot, build up some self-esteem, yield significant health benefits, and allow better efforts at weight loss later on. I'm not aware of any trials that evaluate this approach.

I actually think it would be extremely interesting to see an RCT evaluating the typical recommendations in this forum and the Losing Fat forum and look at how that approach fares wrt long term weight management. I suspect it would work much better than a lot of approaches in the literature (e.g. not much focus on building/retaining lean mass, high protein meals spaced throughout the day) (?)

Also one comment concerning the above point on weight loss interventions: yes but IIRC they use the fact that standard weight loss interventions don’t work that well as an argument against the relationship between weight and health. But if the intervention doesn’t work it’s not weird that this will make it seem like that association is weaker. Those studies will underestimate the strength of the relationship between weight and health. The fact that you do see a clear association for bariatric surgery which has a higher long term success rate underscores this point IMO

I think the idea that obesity+fit is better than healthy weight + unfit has much weaker evidence behind it once the above is taken into account

[Heisman2]

I agree doing RCTs with the approach here would be a great idea. I recommend the approach advocated here on my website as I do think it's the best approach out there. I'm all for doing other things initially if desired but then if progress stalls or never even starts, rigorously tracking things is the way to go for troubleshooting purposes in my opinion.

Bariatric surgery does seem to have unique benefits independent of weight loss. I don't know how much of those unique benefits are the significant decrease in food intake that occurs vs metabolic/hormonal changes form the surgery itself. I agree if most studies do not find large amounts of weight loss then it is going to be really hard to find any significant associations. Additionally, there is ample evidence that 5-15% weight loss, regardless of starting weight (assuming you are starting in a state of obesity), leads to tons of health benefits in a variety of conditions, and that should not be discounted. See figure 4 here: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41366-021-00788-4

Another issue per that review is that "unfit" seems to be defined as the bottom 20-25% of fitness in most studies, which leaves a lot to be desired.

I'm gonna go through the review again and take notes so I can address various points better.

[air2fakie]

Thanks for posting, but I don't think most folks who are skeptical of those TDEE studies need a study to confirm that exercise is good for health and contributes to weight loss.

My point in those other threads was that if discussions are going to promote the idea that certain levels of exercise (or in some cases, almost any exercise together) have almost no effect on TDEE & weight loss, they should make sure there aren't obvious shortcomings in those studies - like literally making no attempt to prescribe, control & monitor food intake & exercise except via secondhand measures and limiting the studies to only one very specific group of people.

It's comical for people to promote in words & graphs that except for initial light physical activity any further exercise levels have virtually no effect on TDEE or weight (not your thread). It's slightly less comical for someone to argue twice that researchers of the study you posted believe their study supports that prior study when the result is the inverse of those prior results. In these posts, it should be clarified that the studies find results that are "the opposite or less than THEY THEMSELVES expected", since it's the studies themselves that state what's expected, as if readers all believe that human bodies operate in a purely linear fashion or downregulation doesn't exist at any level.

No problem with you or anyone else posting studies, but people should be cautious when promoting certain ideas (speaking generally, not directed at you or anyone else). If it's not obvious from the subject groups of each of these studies, obese & sedentary likely go hand-in-hand for the test subjects.

As a side note, IMO bariatric (or any) surgery shouldn't be promoted as a mainstream alternative to eating less and exercising.

[EliKoehn]

As a side note, IMO bariatric (or any) surgery shouldn't be promoted as a mainstream alternative to eating less and exercising.

Actually, I was also surprised to see Heisman take a favorable stance towards it.

In the main, its utility seems to be a cheat to circumvent discipline against following a process with guaranteed success. Even though I am a layperson and am possibly misunderstanding something important, it seems like recommending a surgery in lieu of a medical emergency and in the name of convenience when the patient isn't unable to achieve the same results via normal metabolism isn't in the "Hippocratic" spirit of medicine.

[air2fakie]

Actually, I was also surprised to see Heisman take a favorable stance towards it.

In the main, its utility seems to be a cheat to circumvent discipline against following a process with guaranteed success. Even though I am a layperson and am possibly misunderstanding something important, it seems like recommending a surgery in lieu of a medical emergency and in the name of convenience when the patient isn't unable to achieve the same results via normal metabolism isn't in the "Hippocratic" spirit of medicine.

To be fair to OP, my comment was more general as I suspect he would only recommend the procedure in certain cases even if not an emergency.

My point was that if someone is sedentary by default, they probably have other options to try in good faith whether diet or exercise, or likely both in terms of overall lifestyle regardless of what thinks about each’s specific effect on TDEE biologically.

[EliKoehn]

To be fair to OP, my comment was more general as I suspect he would only recommend the procedure in certain cases even if not an emergency.

My point was that if someone is sedentary by default, they probably have other options to try in good faith whether diet or exercise, or likely both in terms of overall lifestyle regardless of what thinks about each’s specific effect on TDEE biologically.

Yes, and I don't mean to put any words in his mouth or be presumptuous, either. I simply got that general impression from the post and another in a previous thread. Hope the tone isn't seen as accusatory so much as surprised.

[Heisman2]

No worries about anything, I don't think anyone here has posted anything wrong in any way.

Regarding bariatric surgery, a few considerations:

1. It costs like $30,000 or something so most people will not get get it unless insurance improves. At least in adolescents (I'm a pediatrician so I'm not sure the case for adults), adolescents need to show weight stability for 6 months prior to getting it covered. I would guess it is similar for adults. Thus, they need to put in some effort before they can get it. They also need to under a psychological evaluation and other counseling regarding the required lifestyle afterwards. The point is people cannot just get it on a whim, it's a serious decision that requires a large time commitment.

2. While I don't think it should actively be promoted, I do think it is over-stigmatized. You mention emergency; there aren't going to be true emergencies such that if you don't get the weight off in 2 months you will die. In that case the patient probably would be too sick to even qualify for bariatric surgery. However, in the case of pediatrics we do know that when adolescents develop type 2 diabetes it typically progresses considerably more quickly than with adult-onset; with no changes they will suffer many severe consequences before age 50. We don't have long-term data on bariatric surgery yet but short-term it has very good outcomes in adolescents for diabetes reversal. Much more than nutrition/exercise/medication management. I do have a few adolescents with type 2 diabetes who are doing well just with exercise/nutrition, but these are motivated adolescents with supportive family environments. Without the family support it's almost hopeless.

3. I totally get the idea that it's "cheating", but again, to undergo it people have to show a significant lifestyle change to just get to the point of weight stability, and there are strict dietary requirements afterwards. The ones who make the lifestyle changes and stick with them have more long-term progress. The ones who don't will gain the weight back and lose the benefits (at least some of the benefits). So I don't see it as cheating so much as more of an assistance mechanism. As a point of comparison, I would consider the device you put into a patient's stomach that can release stomach contents into the toilet after a meal to be more cheating, but that's a topic for a separate thread.

Overall I'm very much pro-bariatric surgery in the right circumstance. For some people it's going to be their only chance. We have patients who regularly go to our healthy weight center (basically a team of obesity specialists with physicians, psychologists, dietitians, physical therapists, social workers) and still struggle not to gain weight. After you exhaust other options, why not use bariatric surgery if it is available and effective?

[TolerantLactose]

Their main point is that for interventions, focusing on fitness will likely yield more bang for the buck than focusing on weight loss since weight loss interventions typically do not yield a ton of weight loss.

That's the problem. From a physiological point of view, weight loss is a simple matter compared to fitness improvements.

[air2fakie]

After you exhaust other options, why not use bariatric surgery if it is available and effective?

There are short and long term risks associated with any surgery, including death, in addition to cost (and the endless billing nightmare of being caught between the insurance comp and healthcare provider that all patients deal with) which can make surgical decisions more serious than the routine nature by which some doctors view those same surgeries.

In the end, as you said, the effectiveness depends on making lifestyle changes in addition to the surgery. So if those lifestyle changes can be made in good faith without the surgery, that IMO would always be preferable - the threshold of whether someone has truly exhausted all other options can vary greatly from person to person.

[EiFit91]

Thanks for posting, but I don't think most folks who are skeptical of those TDEE studies need a study to confirm that exercise is good for health and contributes to weight loss.

My point in those other threads was that if discussions are going to promote the idea that certain levels of exercise (or in some cases, almost any exercise together) have almost no effect on TDEE & weight loss, they should make sure there aren't obvious shortcomings in those studies - like literally making no attempt to prescribe, control & monitor food intake & exercise except via secondhand measures and limiting the studies to only one very specific group of people.

It's comical for people to promote in words & graphs that except for initial light physical activity any further exercise levels have virtually no effect on TDEE or weight (not your thread). It's slightly less comical for someone to argue twice that researchers of the study you posted believe their study supports that prior study when the result is the inverse of those prior results. In these posts, it should be clarified that the studies find results that are "the opposite or less than THEY THEMSELVES expected", since it's the studies themselves that state what's expected, as if readers all believe that human bodies operate in a purely linear fashion or downregulation doesn't exist at any level.

No problem with you or anyone else posting studies, but people should be cautious when promoting certain ideas (speaking generally, not directed at you or anyone else). If it's not obvious from the subject groups of each of these studies, obese & sedentary likely go hand-in-hand for the test subjects.

As a side note, IMO bariatric (or any) surgery shouldn't be promoted as a mainstream alternative to eating less and exercising.

Not an argument at all, a direct quote from the article.

For the bolded part, there are two possible explanations. (1): the authors, some of them (e.g. the corresponding author) highly cited, well published and presumably experts in their fields, misunderstand the constrained energy model whereas you understand it correctly. 2): maybe you haven’t understood the constrained energy model as well as you think

[air2fakie]

Not an argument at all, a direct quote from the article.

For the bolded part, there are two possible explanations. (1): the authors, some of them (e.g. the corresponding author) highly cited, well published and presumably experts in their fields, misunderstand the constrained energy model whereas you understand it correctly. 2): maybe you haven’t understood the constrained energy model as well as you think

Well if someone wrote something in a study, it must be true regardless of what the facts are right?

I suggest you go back and read the infamous thread where you spent two pages before you realized you were completely misreading a simple linear graph - and then spent the next 3 pages drawing up a new graph, making new interpretations and drawing new researcher assumptions for that study which you had no involvement with - before you imply someone else doesn’t understand it.

Before you ask for an excerpt as proof or accuse me of strawmanning again, it’s that entire thread. And again, nothing you said invalidates anything I said to OP in his other thread.

[EiFit91]

Well if someone wrote something in a study, it must be true regardless of what the facts are right?

I suggest you go back and read the infamous thread where you spent two pages before you realized you were completely misreading a simple linear graph - and then spent the next 3 pages drawing up a new graph, making new interpretations and drawing new researcher assumptions for that study which you had no involvement with - before you imply someone else doesn’t understand it.

Before you ask for an excerpt as proof or accuse me of strawmanning again, it’s that entire thread. And again, nothing you said invalidates anything I said to OP in his other thread.

You are strawmanning in the above post too. Where have I ever defended anything like the statement in the first sentence of your post? If you search my post history you would find several examples of me expressing scepticism towards certain studies.

Did I misread the linear graph? I thought it was the nonlinear one (to the right) you thought I misread.

I drew the second figure to show how both those scenarios (depicted in both curves) can be viewed as specific instances of the same general model. I also formalized this mathematically to illustrate that point. It is just changing the value of a constant. The functional form is the same and the variables are the same. The functional form is the essence of the constrained energy model. You could make a similar adjustment to the linear (traditional) TDEE model, which would result in two linear curves with different slopes. That would not change the essence of the model.

The assumption that you are making (that the curve is always the same and the peak cannot change) is just as much a subjective interpretation of the model. In fact, in the same article it is suggested that the peak may depend on different variables - hence I view the curve in the paper as an illustration for a particular value of the constant.

[air2fakie]

Did I misread the linear graph? I thought it was the nonlinear one (to the right) you thought I misread.

Apologies, you’re correct. You misread the simple non-linear graph for 2 pages. I won’t bother responding to the replies to stuff I didn’t actually say.

[EiFit91]

Apologies, you’re correct. You misread the simple non-linear graph for 2 pages. I won’t bother responding to the replies to stuff I didn’t actually say.

Assumptions can be implicit or explicit. Under certain assumptions, your marathon runner example and the Michael Phelps example work as a reductio ad absurdum against the constrained energy model. Under other assumptions, they don’t. Some people on the forum seem to think that this argument works (it has been made many times on the forum, though often in the form of «jokes»), others seem to think it is a strawman and doesn’t refute the constrained energy model. I am of the latter opinion.

[air2fakie]

Assumptions can be implicit or explicit. Under certain assumptions, your marathon runner example and the Michael Phelps example work as a reductio ad absurdum against the constrained energy model. Under other assumptions, they don’t. Some people on the forum seem to think that this argument works (it has been made many times on the forum, though often in the form of «jokes»), others seem to think it is a strawman and doesn’t refute the constrained energy model. I am of the latter opinion.

I am of the opinion that there’s an infamous long thread where we discussed this already if anyone is interested in reliving it or deciding where they stand. I suspect most people don’t even open these threads anymore and those that do, roll their eyes at all of our responses.

[EliKoehn]

I actually have trouble even understanding the dispute in the first place. Honestly parsing out the exact reasoning of specific claims made about fine points from multiple threads challenging a very simple principle would take a lot more than the casual reading I'm interested in giving, but even then the essence of a clear problem doesn't hang in my mind.

@EiFit, I actually don't see the strawman you keep alluding to, and your "Possibility 1.)" in post #13, is almost an appeal to authority, if we're naming fallacies. You don't literally say that it's true because they're cited experts, but you are saying that they're probably right on account of that, against A2F's challenge to the argument.

[EiFit91]

I actually have trouble even understanding the dispute in the first place. Honestly parsing out the exact reasoning of specific claims made about fine points from multiple threads challenging a very simple principle would take a lot more than the casual reading I'm interested in giving, but even then the essence of a clear problem doesn't hang in my mind.

@EiFit, I actually don't see the strawman you keep alluding to, and your "Possibility 1.)" in post #13, is almost an appeal to authority, if we're naming fallacies. You don't literally say that it's true because they're cited experts, but you are saying that they're probably right on account of that, against A2F's challenge to the argument.

I am no fan of appeals to authority. However, I have tried many times to appeal to logic and facts and Air2Fakie responds to this by either referencing an old thread, ignoring the point or claiming I am hopping between positions.

Thus what I have left is to appeal to the authors themselves. They seem to be interpreting the model in the same way as I do. As you write I didn’t literally say that they are right, but I invite A2F to consider the possibility that these smart people have understood something he hasn’t. If he won’t listen to me, maybe he’ll listen to others (authorities on the topic).

To see that he refuses to engage with the substance of my arguments, just look at his response to my post above where I explain the reasoning behind the graph under discussion. I would be happy to repeat that entire line of reasoning again if people are interested.

Concerning strawmen, there are multiple. The particular one I had in mind was the frequent argument about how the constrained TDEE model implies that going from sedentary to Michael Phelps won’t do anything to your TDEE. I think that’s a misrepresentation of what the model is saying.

Other errors in this thread by A2F:

1) claiming the various studies make no attempt to control or monitor subjects. In fact, many of the studies used a «doubly labelled water» method for estimating TDEEs so that they don’t have to rely on flawed methods such as error-prone self-reporting. Actually attempting to monitor food intake in real living conditions would IMO be an inferior study because it would involve many other issues

2) the claim that only one specific group of people have been studied. Multiple studies have been posted, not all of them focused on obese and sedentary subjects. This was also covered in a separate thread: https://forum.bodybuilding.com/showt...p;goto=newpost

Relevant quote: «Overall, energy compensation was not different in men versus women and did not vary with age (i.e., BEE × sex and BEE × age interactions; Table S1B). Hence, energy compensation seems to be a general phenomenon that equally to men and women, young and old. »

The analysis did show that downregulation effects are stronger for fatter people, but also found pronounced downregulation in leaner individuals. I think that makes sense and helps account for much of the disagreement on the topic in the forum.

In this review, https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5388457/ (also posted in previous threads) they describe a study that lasted 16 months and found substantial energy compensation. The study sample was normal weight adults.

[air2fakie]

I am no fan of appeals to authority. However, I have tried many times to appeal to logic and facts and Air2Fakie responds to this by either referencing an old thread, ignoring the point or claiming I am hopping between positions.

Thus what I have left is to appeal to the authors themselves. They seem to be interpreting the model in the same way as I do. As you write I didn’t literally say that they are right, but I invite A2F to consider the possibility that these smart people have understood something he hasn’t. If he won’t listen to me, maybe he’ll listen to others (authorities on the topic).

To see that he refuses to engage with the substance of my arguments, just look at his response to my post above where I explain the reasoning behind the graph under discussion. I would be happy to repeat that entire line of reasoning again if people are interested.

Concerning strawmen, there are multiple. The particular one I had in mind was the frequent argument about how the constrained TDEE model implies that going from sedentary to Michael Phelps won’t do anything to your TDEE. I think that’s a misrepresentation of what the model is saying.

Other errors in this thread by A2F:

1) claiming the various studies make no attempt to control or monitor subjects. In fact, many of the studies used a «doubly labelled water» method for estimating TDEEs so that they don’t have to rely on flawed methods such as error-prone self-reporting. Actually attempting to monitor food intake in real living conditions would IMO be an inferior study because it would involve many other issues

2) the claim that only one specific group of people have been studied. Multiple studies have been posted, not all of them focused on obese and sedentary subjects. This was also covered in a separate thread: https://forum.bodybuilding.com/showt...3&goto=newpost

Relevant quote: «Overall, energy compensation was not different in men versus women and did not vary with age (i.e., BEE × sex and BEE × age interactions; Table S1B). Hence, energy compensation seems to be a general phenomenon that equally to men and women, young and old. »

The analysis did show that downregulation effects are stronger for fatter people, but also found pronounced downregulation in leaner individuals. I think that makes sense and helps account for much of the disagreement on the topic in the forum.

In this review, https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5388457/ (also posted in previous threads) they describe a study that lasted 16 months and found substantial energy compensation. The study sample was normal weight adults.

Talk about strawmen, you write all this in response to EK and you still don't even address my actual statements in this & OPs last thread about the results of the 2 studies I actually referred to being very different. Instead you veer off on a tangent of "Other Errors" which are strawman arguments:

- Your #1: You purposely misstate what I actually said to OP on his last thread that: "the food intake of sedentary-obese people isn't prescribed, tracked or controlled in these studies ... Give specific instructions, give pre-packaged meal and liquids, perform exercise under monitoring at a sports clinic/institute, then use second-hand methods to attempt to verify adherence - not as the main tracking mechanism. I understand it's not easy or cheap to use proper instructions or controls, but that doesn't make it any less necessary if a study is going to promote the idea that any or certain levels of activity don't have any effect on TDEE."

- Your #2: You ignore that the 2 studies I actually referred to only include obese & sedentary people and instead link to one of your own threads about some study that I didn't discuss, and bizarrely including a "relevant quote" that doesn't even address the issue of whether the subjects were obese & sedentary. You then link another "study" also not one of the 2 studies I'm discussing, which ironically is only a "study of other studies of sedentary behavior in adults". The two studies which you conveniently forgot to link, are the 2 actual studies I mentioned in the statement you took issue with.

You talk about logic & substance, yet can't compile a clear, concise & consistent argument in any thread.

Feel free to write another lengthy post to address my response to your "Other Errors" list rather than what EK asked you about (my statement about the inconsistent results of the 2 studies being discussed). Or feel free to discuss those results but continue to re-interpret & mis-interpret both studies to mean something entirely different than what the authors actually wrote. That's the essence of being a strawman no? And feel free to complain about me strawmanning you when on both of OPs 2 threads I was having a discussion with OP & you interjected with strawman arguments to goad me into an argument when I wasn't even talking to you.

For anyone remotely interested, as discussed above below is the actual thread with the "right side non-linear" graph that you posted which on its face and in words says that any physical activity beyond initial light activity has virtually no effect on TDEE. Whether Michael Phelps, marathon runner, dude going for a 5k run after work, old lady walking around the block 40 times, etc.

https://forum.bodybuilding.com/showt...hp?t=180405913

And below is OPs recent thread on the second study which I compared it to.

https://forum.bodybuilding.com/showt...hp?t=180670343

I'm done here. Good luck in your future endeavors!

[EiFit91]

A2F: It wasn’t clear to me from your post that your statement referred to those particular studies. In any case, while issues can certainly be raised about particular studies, it is relevant to draw upon the overall body of literature to show that those issues are not general.

Your statement about inconsistencies, and your continued insistence that I «reinterpret and misinterpret» is why I in the other thread quoted the authors on their statement that their study results provide support for the constrained energy model.

I don’t try to goad you into an argument either, I wanted to clarify that the issues you raised are not general to the entire field. In fact you started referencing the older TDEE discussions in this thread all by yourself...

But I agree it’s pointless to engage further as we are obviously talking past each other.

[EliKoehn]

Didn't mean to escalate that guys, it was just my impression being superficially confused.

So...

Open disagreements on this forum:
- High cholesterol diets are healthy (MWP vs. AdamWW)
- Downregulation doesn't significantly compensate for increasing physical activity (A2F & The People vs. EiFit, Mrpb)
- Performance with the major compound barbell lifts doesn't represent overall strength (BG vs. Eli)
- It's virtually impossible to weigh over 100KG naturally without being nearly obese (EiFit & The People vs. Eli)

[EiFit91]

Didn't mean to escalate that guys, it was just my impression being superficially confused.

So...

Open disagreements on this forum:
- High cholesterol diets are healthy (MWP vs. AdamWW)
- Downregulation doesn't significantly compensate for increasing physical activity (A2F & The People vs. EiFit, Mrpb)
- Performance with the major compound barbell lifts doesn't represent overall strength (BG vs. Eli)
- It's virtually impossible to weigh over 100KG naturally without being nearly obese (EiFit & The People vs. Eli)

LOL!!

I am sure there are some more?

- You should take the covid vaccine (Heisman vs the entire Misc)

[air2fakie]

Didn't mean to escalate that guys, it was just my impression being superficially confused.

So...

Open disagreements on this forum:
- High cholesterol diets are healthy (MWP vs. AdamWW)
- Downregulation doesn't significantly compensate for increasing physical activity (A2F & The People vs. EiFit, Mrpb)
- Performance with the major compound barbell lifts doesn't represent overall strength (BG vs. Eli)
- It's virtually impossible to weigh over 100KG naturally without being nearly obese (EiFit & The People vs. Eli)

Hah, no worries - it's fitting since it's your thread that led to him to originally post that infamous graph from the 1st study. Thanks again for that. :P

I don't think he'll ever learn to read the simple graph from the 1st study model he likes to refer back to, which clearly claims that any physical activity beyond initial light activity has virtually no effect on TDEE & literally says it in words in its own footnote. I'm not against the idea that downregulation has some effect & can even have a significant effect in outlying cases, but it's silly to promote a study that says it offsets virtually all activity.

It's more silly how he zeroed in on my statements about the differing results of the 2 studies (both on this thread and OPs other thread from the day before this thread), replies on both threads repeatedly with references to the same quote from the 2nd study linking it to the 1st, and now claims he wasn't clear I was talking about those 2 studies. Still without remotely addressing the accuracy of my statement (to OP ironically, not him) which he challenged repeatedly in the first place.

It's not an ongoing disagreement, it's just a ****show that wasn't worth him repeatedly trying to start in the first place.

[TolerantLactose]

Eat less and move more, fatso.

[EiFit91]

Hah, no worries - it's fitting since it's your thread that led to him to originally post that infamous graph from the 1st study. Thanks again for that. :P

I don't think he'll ever learn to read the simple graph from the 1st study model he likes to refer back to, which clearly claims that any physical activity beyond initial light activity has virtually no effect on TDEE & literally says it in words in its own footnote. I'm not against the idea that downregulation has some effect & can even have a significant effect in outlying cases, but it's silly to promote a study that says it offsets virtually all activity.

It's more silly how he zeroed in on my statements about the differing results of the 2 studies (both on this thread and OPs other thread from the day before this thread), replies on both threads repeatedly with references to the same quote from the 2nd study linking it to the 1st, and now claims he wasn't clear I was talking about those 2 studies. Still without remotely addressing the accuracy of my statement (to OP ironically, not him) which he challenged repeatedly in the first place.

It's not an ongoing disagreement, it's just a ****show that wasn't worth him repeatedly trying to start in the first place.

It wasn’t clear because your post was referring to the «discussions» and not those particular studies:

«My point in those other threads was that if discussions are going to promote the idea that certain levels of exercise (or in some cases, almost any exercise together) have almost no effect on TDEE & weight loss, they should make sure there aren't obvious shortcomings in those studies - like literally making no attempt to prescribe, control & monitor food intake & exercise except via secondhand measures and limiting the studies to only one very specific group of people.»

Since many studies have been discussed throughout various threads, I interpreted this as more of an overall statement about studies on this topic.

A graph and a model isn’t the same thing. I am referring to a model. But again it’s futile to keep discussing this.

[air2fakie]

It wasn’t clear because your post was referring to the «discussions» and not those particular studies:

«My point in those other threads was that if discussions are going to promote the idea that certain levels of exercise (or in some cases, almost any exercise together) have almost no effect on TDEE & weight loss, they should make sure there aren't obvious shortcomings in those studies - like literally making no attempt to prescribe, control & monitor food intake & exercise except via secondhand measures and limiting the studies to only one very specific group of people.»

Since many studies have been discussed throughout various threads, I interpreted this as more of an overall statement about studies on this topic.

A graph and a model isn’t the same thing. I am referring to a model. But again it’s futile to keep discussing this.

What a joke.

See this & the two thread links I posted if you want to continue the discussion further, & pretend I'm saying everything I said to you (or OP, in cases where you're interjecting yourself) on those threads in real time.

[AdamWW]

Open disagreements on this forum:
- High cholesterol diets are healthy (MWP vs. AdamWW)

depends entirely on genetic response.

And it's not so simple as 'are they healthy', moreso can they be healthy.

THey can, yes, if eating the high-cholesterol items doesn't elevate your LDL to a level that increases health risk

[mdonnelly80]

Interesting article. Although, their argument is based around an a poor approach to weight loss. The data backs up their point (i.e. people yo-yo diet...) but, again, that's because the average individual doesn't lose weight in a sustainable manner. I imagine that their study would be much different if they looked at the portion of the population that loses weight correctly AND exercises.